Reference is made to art historical literature and contemporary workshop treatises, and all materials used are authentic. This technique would allow the painter to be in the light of his studio, facing his motif, when working in colour. Prints made on the ground layer could form the basis of underpainting, while those on top layers could transfer highlights and optical effects, not seen with the naked eye. This paper outlines a simple printing method that would enable the seventeenth-century painter to transfer monochrome images, corrected in orientation, from the lens to a canvas with relative ease, for use as the painting progressed in the stages prescribed at the time. It considers how the limitations of the materials that make transfers possible might affect studio practice, and ultimately the stylistic qualities of the work produced.
It addresses how an artist could use the condensed, flattened images from camera obscura projections in his painting process, when the subject could appear reversed and inverted on the screen or on the wall. It has a pragmatic and practical approach, bringing a painter’s eye and experience to the problems of transferring images from the lens to a canvas, using the primitive technology and unrefined materials available then.
It’s the age of the ‘happy snapper’, instagramming every moment of life.This is a report of a studio experiment to explore how images from the camera obscura could have been used directly by artists of Vermeer’s era. Anyone with a phone in their hand has the ability to take a street scene photograph. It can be said that the pace of change in social and cultural demographics has picked up during the 20 th and 21 st centuries and street photography provides a wonderful (and at times, discreet) way of documenting our way of life for future generations. It uniquely indulges the nostalgia within us. If the viewer recognises the clothes, hairstyles etc, they would reminisce over their own childhood memories. Another example would be those from Shirley Baker, images of kids playing in the streets of Salford in the 1960’s. If we look at photos of a street scene in 1980s New York with the Twin Towers in the background, we immediately remember the tragedy of 2001, where we were and the other haunting images of that day. Every minute and moment of life can be photographed and kept for all time. The photograph becomes a type of ‘Memento Mori’ for bygone times and can elicit a powerful psychological response. Photographers such as Henri-Cartier Bresson and Diane Arbus who documented the everyday weird and wonderful in the 1950’s were probably the pioneers of what we are familiar with today. Post war saw the growing affordability of cameras and the consequent boom in candid and social documentary photography. Aside from journalists, ordinary people and hobbyist’s priorities did not tend towards luxuries such as film for their cameras (if they could afford one) during these tough years. During the two World Wars, the format could also have been argued to be under the umbrella term of ‘war photography’ and possibly photojournalism. In Edwardian times it used to be a photographer who would take portraits on the street for a fee. The definition of street photography (or photographer) is also different from 1918 to today. The innovation of shutter speeds a few decades later enabled freeze motion, which meant portraits could be taken in a matter of seconds rather than a person sitting absolutely still for tens of minutes (hence portraits of Victorians tended to be somewhat stern looking) and also meant action shots could be taken without blur.įrom exclusivity to ubiquity, street photography’s definition has evolved alongside the opening up of the medium to all people of all backgrounds in conjunction with its technological advances from its origin of metal and glass plates to film to digital.
The first known photograph ever taken was of a Parisian street scene in 1826 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, the first known portrait was taken in 1839 by John William Draper of his sister Dorothy and the first selfie was taken in 1839 by a young man called Robert Cornelius.
What we take photographs of in the 21 st century is virtually the same as what the Victorians took photographs of - streets, landscapes, people, sports, stills etc. It wasn’t until the 19 th century that a process was invented to ‘fix’ the image onto metal and glass plates (and later paper) to keep for posterity. Since its inception in Victorian times, humankind has had a fascination with capturing not only the real, raw and gritty but also the mundane.įorms of photography have been around for millennia with the camera obscura (latin for ‘dark room’) where the image is projected through a pin hole into a dark room or screen. The saying goes, ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’ and street photography certainly lives up to this reputation.
0 kommentar(er)
